CBKB

Another update: we've successfully scheduled a medical for tomorrow (!) at the medical clinic in Kobe. My wife had to quickly get a Covid shot today (the last one she got was a fourth booster but that was more than a year ago) and then is off on a whirlwind day trip to Kobe starting 5am on Friday. Thank goodness for the high-speed train system. It seems that the two Tokyo-based clinics are full for roughly the next month, so I assume the one clinic in Kobe has plenty of capacity thanks to it not being in the 42-million-plus population Kanto region. I've put in a request for an interview appointment at the Tokyo embassy for the first week of March, which is comfortably past the two weeks they want us to allow for the medical results to make their electronic way to the embassy. If we can get an early March date (they only do DCF interviews Monday and Wednesday mornings) we're all on track. Unfortunately the embassy doesn't even promise a response for 7 business days, so we won't know for another 10 days or so whether or not we can get an appointment. At some point I'll do what others have done and provide a full timeline. We did have trouble early on getting the embassy to respond, and I'm still not sure exactly what the best method is to get a DCF case rolling.

Actually about an hour or two after you posted, @millefleur , I received the e-mail! We got the case number immediately at the embassy--it was printed on the letter the consular officer handed to me. Unfortunately us having the number didn't mean it was showing up in CEAC. She's now in the system and we spent a couple of hours going through the DS-260 yesterday...tough to figure out dates and addresses for everywhere she's lived in the last 34 years. By the time we finished the DS-260 around 4pm most of the designated medical exam facilities were closed...the one we could get through to didn't have any appointments available until Feb 28th, which really pushes our timeline of her starting her new job April 1st. We're hoping the other three facilities will have something available earlier. The Tokyo embassy requires a two-week wait after the medical for the final interview but only holds interviews on Mondays and Wednesdays, so that plus a ~1 week wait to get passport et al. returned by mail really puts us right up on the edge of making our schedule.

So now I'm starting to worry a little...more than a week has passed and still no e-mail. Other DCF via Tokyo seem to have had just a few days' wait for the e-mail; the CO did sign off on the I-130 right in front of me and told me it is approved. The paper notice of approval allowed us to get the police report (now in hand) and we need her to be in the system to complete the DS-260 and schedule the medical. She also now has the official job offer letter in hand and they want her to start on April 1, yikes! Her offer letter does say something to the effect of providing "assistance in obtaining an appropriate visa for you to work in the University of XXXX pending your receipt of permanent residency." But I don't think her hiring department actually understands the timeline needed for an H-1B or similar. Best-case scenario we get the e-mail in a few days, can schedule the medical within a week, schedule the final interview for two weeks after the medical (the embassy said there needed to be two weeks for the medical results to be received by them), then another few days after the interview to get her passport and packet sent to her. That would put us at about a month from now, which is enough breathing room. However, any delays along the way (long wait for a medical appt., difficulty quickly arranging travel between Kyushu and Tokyo) would start to make things tight. No questions, just an update and some venting/worrying...

Just an update in case anyone is curious or comes across this thread looking for information. I visited the embassy last Friday and all went smoothly. I was in and out in about an hour; the consular officer signed off on the I-130 after a few cursory questions and what sort of felt like praise on the completeness of my I-864. I received the paper I-130 approval letter before leaving the embassy, which my wife used to get the police certificate ordered today--it's expected to be done within a week. We're still waiting for her case to show up in the system so we can schedule the medical check and fill out the DS-260. From what I've read it typically takes a few days to show up, so we're hoping to see the e-mail from the embassy mid-week.

Thanks everyone for the info and advice. I'm feeling a lot more comfortable realizing that we don't actually have so many true hurdles with the DCF as long as my stack of documents is complete. We've actually gone through the whole thing before and did exactly what @millefleur suggests and had the medical and interview in Tokyo all in one trip. Due to difficulty with the medical exam (I don't remember if it was booking the appointment or waiting for results--or both?) we had to spend 10 days total in Tokyo, which isn't feasible this time around as our younger kid is still in school. From what I understand I don't actually need to be there for the actual interview for issuance of the I-551.

@nastra30 yes after we moved to Japan she did submit an I-407 at a US port of entry on one of our visits to the U.S. After that she always just got a tourist visa on landing/ESTA. Another question for those reading: should I say anything about her job offer when providing all of our docs at the embassy? My guess is that it's not something they even care about and I don't need to bring it up unless asked. I remember (from our first time through this in 1999) that submitting the I-130 and other docs didn't involve any sort of interview anyway.

@milimelo oh wow, thank you for letting me know that. I had assumed all along that we'd need to get some sort of US criminal history (meaning lack of criminal history!) since she lived there for nearly 20 years. One less hassle!

@Redro and @millefleur thanks both of you for those ideas/insights. 3-4 months and then no immigration messing around for 10 years does make the DCF route appealing. We're dreading the medical exam because when we did the green card the first time in the late 1990s, there were only the tiniest handful of clinics that could do the exam--in fact I just checked and even now there are only three designated clinics in the entire mainland of Japan. We don't live near any of them so it requires time and travel; hopefully it's not too hard to get appointments. I'm also not sure what's going to be required for the criminal record check; the Japanese one it looks like we can get a report within about a week from the prefectural police but if she needs some sort of FBI check it seems difficult due to the fingerprinting requirement. The simplest sounds like it might be for her to visit the U.S. and go to a post office that does FBI electronic fingerprinting for quickest turnaround. @millefleur to answer your question, yes I believe we have all of our ducks in a row. Tokyo actually asks for the I-864 at the same time as the I-130; we have a comfortable amount of assets in the U.S. plus I have a good job so I'm not concerned about showing assets/income. I also have started my job and have a home address here in the U.S. now, so I've already re-established U.S. domicile. I'm lucky to be able to "commute" between the two countries as we work things out.

Kind of a complicated situation and I could use some advice. I'm a US citizen and my wife is a Japanese citizen; we've been married for about 25 years and living in Japan for about the last 10 years. She was a green card holder for many years until we moved to Japan (and had to give up her green card). We were planning on eventually moving back to the US but recent events accelerated those plans. I got a job in the US that had a very short-notice start date and was granted permission for Direct Consular Filing. I have an appointment in Tokyo next week to submit an I-130 and related documents at the Embassy. However, my wife just a few hours ago got a job offer from a U.S. university that is offering to sponsor her for an H-1B. They are flexible on the start date but would like to get her to the U.S. as soon as possible (as would we). Three questions: Which method is likely to be faster? I know that H-1Bs through universities typically get people working within 4-6 months, but I've also heard that some universities can do it in just a couple of months? This seems even quicker than DCF (and maybe minus the hoops of the medical exam and criminal history search?). It's also appealing because the university handles all of the paperwork and pays all of the fees. I really am not clear on how long we can expect DCF to take. Can we do both in parallel? I don't mind paying the I-130 fees and other things twice but I worry that starting one process would close off the possibility of the other. Again, our goal is for her to be able to move to the U.S. as quickly as possible. If we go down the H-1B route I need to figure out what to tell the Tokyo Embassy pretty quickly. Is there an advantage down the road to doing DCF? I have never even thought about what's involved in changing from an H-1B if you've already married to a U.S. citizen. I don't want her to get stuck in some sort of limbo waiting years to get her green card. Thanks for any insight you may have! I don't imagine that many people have been in a similar situation but I know there's a lot of experienced people here.